FIG. 10 is a block diagram showing a conventional image sensing apparatus such as a digital still camera or a digital video camera and a personal computer (PC).
The conventional image sensing apparatus 500 typically performs the processes including image sensing by an image sensor 501 such as a CCD, a signal processing such as correction of image data in an image processing unit 502 and writing data into a recording medium 503, as shown in FIG. 10. However, such image sensing apparatus 500 did not allow the user to regenerate the image data by changing the parameters used for the image processing such as white balance correction and gamma conversion after photographing.
In order to solve such a problem, there is a method in which the image data acquired from the image sensor 501 of the image sensing apparatus 500 is directly recorded on the recording medium 503 without undergoing the signal processing such as white balance correction in the image processing unit 502 (referred to as “raw data” hereinafter), and transferred to the PC 510, where the user changes the parameters used for the image processing such as white balance correction and gamma conversion in a parameter setting unit 512, and the image processing unit 513 develops (reproduces) the raw data, employing the changed parameters. Here, this process is called a “developing process of raw data”. Thus, the PC 510 processes raw data input from the image sensing apparatus 500 with the same processes by software as those performed inside the image sensing apparatus 500, so that the user can change the raw data to have desired color and image quality.
However, since the developing processing of such a system greatly depends on the processing speed of the PC, there is a problem that it takes a lot of time to perform the developing processing on the PC having a low processing speed. Also, along with the development of the digital camera having a large number of pixels in recent years, the image data amount is further increased and it takes more time to perform the developing processing.